


doth protest too much

by alanxna, clairelutra



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Identity Porn, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates AU/Identity Porn - Soulmate Uses a Different Name than on Soulmark, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29035491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanxna/pseuds/alanxna, https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairelutra/pseuds/clairelutra
Summary: That was the most entertaining part of being around her—she was blatantly quite determined to hate him, and just as blatantly failing at it.Numair's been daydreaming of finding his soulmate all his life. Daine's feelings about hers, on the other hand, are... much more complicated.
Relationships: Numair Salmalín/Veralidaine Sarrasri
Comments: 14
Kudos: 48
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	doth protest too much

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possibilityleft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/gifts).



The tack room attached to the side stables was, as always, a cluttered space, stuffed to the gills with every type of horse tack imaginable. As uncomfortable as riding was, Numair found the place absolutely fascinating. It seemed like there was _always_ something new to discover, no matter how many times he visited. The stables attached to the barracks did their best to maintain surpluses of the basics and didn't have many items that deviated from the standard, but the side stables were where the visiting nobles' travel horses and residents' showy prized pets stayed, and the tack room reflected the variety of its inhabitants.

Normally there would be at least a few stablehands fetching and storing away gear as the riders came and went, but currently, there was only one other occupant—Onua's pretty assistant, Daine, who was already attending to the pile of tack Onua had sent him here to help with.

Meekly, he took the seat across from her and reached for a piece to start with, using the cover to discreetly admire his companion.

He didn't know much about her, only that she was a quiet girl who had immigrated from upper Galla to Tortall recently, loved animals above all else, and had a dry, borderline irreverent sense of humor that he was endlessly charmed by. She was also intensely compassionate, stalwart and hardworking to a fault, and (quite rightfully) had flocks of admirers vying for her attention.

(He also knew that she'd turned down the opportunity to train her wild magic with him when she'd been offered at the start of her work, despite having so much of it that it was nearly spilling out of her ears. That was disappointing for several reasons, but it was what it was. He did wonder about her reasons, but, given how hard Onua had said she worked, he had to assume that she simply didn't have the time.)

He found himself selecting a bridle that was more complicated than the reins he'd originally intended to pick up. It was better to stick with simpler bits and make fewer mistakes when Onua was already unhappy with him—but whether it was that he wanted to show off or because he wanted to coax the reticent girl into helping him, he wasn't sure, but the result was the same.

He was just starting to figure out what the bridle was supposed to look like and where it had been damaged when the girl finished with the rough patch she'd been working on and looked up. Upon finding that she had company, she startled.

He met her with a wry smile, and then tried not to show his amusement at the now-familiar assortment of indescribable expressions that crossed her face whenever she saw him.

That was the most entertaining part of being around her—she was blatantly quite determined to hate him, and just as blatantly failing at it.

Normally people were rather straightforward about whether they liked or disliked him (or disliked him but had to be nice for the sake of politics), but not Daine. He had no idea what he'd done to earn her ire and she refused to tell him, but it didn't seem to stop her from grinning at his jokes and comments, nor from scowling whenever she realized what she was doing.

"Master Numair, sir?" she said once she was done processing fact of his presence. The accusatory _what are you doing here?_ remained unvoiced but evident.

He held up the bridle. "I am here to provide my leatherworking services as recompense for the grave sins I have committed against our great and noble Horsemistress."

Daine fixed him with a long, unimpressed look. She really was a lovely young woman, with her dark, glossy curls and full mouth, pretty blue-grey eyes and long, thick eyelashes. Thin shoulders left her only a shade or two sturdier than 'waif' when she was at rest; a confident, no-nonsense stride left her spiritually several inches taller than her five foot five when she was in motion. Her pretty voice and cute country accent only added to her charm.

He _wished_ he knew why she was so determined to hate him.

At her continued silence, he lowered the bridle and smiled sheepishly. "I left the gates open and Tahoi had to round up her newest herd of ponies before they could make off into the forest. A few still got free, though they've been brought back now." Somewhat morosely, he poked at and then spread the straps. "I didn't even realize I'd walked through."

She rolled her eyes even as the corner of her mouth twitched, then pointedly turned back to her martingale. "Sounds to _me_ like you could use some rounding up of your own, sir."

"You are not wrong about that," he admitted, rueful, and inspected the loop that fastened to the bit, deciding that redoing the stitches there was the most pressing issue.

She didn't seem to have a reply for him, and they fell to working in peace and quiet.

The bridle he'd picked met with neither trouble nor admiration—a fact he barely noticed by the time he was done with it, because seeking out the damaged bits and fixing them took just enough focus to put him in a semi-trance.

He was aware of his companion's presence the whole time, and it was, as always, an oddly comforting awareness, laden with a sense of peace that he was unfamiliar with. Her soft breathing and shifting kept him from floating too far off without interrupting his concentration, the soothing warmth of her wealth of copper fire brushing against his magic sense and keeping him grounded in the most pleasant way possible.

He _really_ wished he knew why she was so determined to hate him. Gods knew the feeling wasn't mutual.

Today, that easy awareness was overlaid with her fidgeting, her fingers repeatedly darting to touch the leather cuff on her left wrist that hid her soulmate's name, glancing in his direction and squirming in her seat. It wasn't _distracting,_ per se, but the sound of her voice didn't startle him when she spoke up.

"...Master Numair, sir?" she said, surprisingly shy and hesitant.

He looked up from the cinch strap he was working on. "Yes?"

"On— Mistress Onua said you're studying soulmates?"

"I am," he confirmed. It was more of an area of casual perusal than intense study, but he'd been picking up books on the subject for most of his life and off and on gathering stories from those who found their soulmates and those who hadn't both. "Why?"

She chewed on her lip, visibly chewing on what she wanted to say as well while she tapped her awl on the bit of leather in front of her on the worktable. "I was wondering... if you ever heard of someone with two names."

He raised his eyebrows, surprised. That wasn't the question he'd been expecting. He bit back the immediate urge to interrogate her for the details of why she was asking—did she have two names? Was it someone she knew that had two names? What did she know so far? What were the names? Was it a simple curiosity she was just shy about asking?—and instead said, "Occasionally, yes. The most common reason seems to be that one's soulmate died early and another came along to replace them. The first's name would fade away in time and the second name would manifest slowly, and fairly reliably between the conception and birth of the second 'mate. It doesn't always happen, of course, but that's the most common cause for one having two soulmates. The gods don't much like blank wrists."

Slowly, she shook her head. "When your new soulmate comes along, the other is completely gone, yeah? Two at the same time, I meant."

He leaned back. "They're rarer—much rarer—but polymates do exist. They're most common in the lower reaches of the southern continent, around Ekallatum especially, but they have been found on the northern continent as well, usually in those with southern blood." He traced a finger around his own cuffed wrist in a spiral. "The names are written in a line, like so, and those that have them often have three or more. If a person's name is written at an angle, that seems to be a trait that comes from the south, so that any polymates' names can chain properly—"

Again, she was shaking her head, a pretty frown on her pretty face.

"A list?" he asked, fascinated. He'd only heard of those in storybooks and the occasional historic text.

The way her mouth twisted suggested not; her cheeks started to turn pink under the attention as she went back to her work with intense focus, making sure her covered wrist was pulled in towards her and not tilted in his direction at all. She looked like she rather regretted asking.

Numair ruthlessly tamped back his curiosity. "Then I am afraid I don't have much to offer, as is. My apologies."

"'S okay," she mumbled, flushing a shade or two darker. "Thank you, sir."

He held his tongue for a long moment, then, unable to help himself, said, "Names are, of course, a very private affair, but if you should ever care to share your story, my door is always open."

Her surprise was was sweetly open until she looked at his faint smile, and then she forcibly dragged it back into a glare. Her hum of acknowledgement was short enough that it was almost a harrumph, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

As determined as she was to hate him, she was still very, _very_ cute.

He touched his own cuff for a moment, _Veralidaine Sarrasri_ inked by the Great Mother Goddess' hand beneath, before going back to the pile for a new bit of tack. Thinking about soulmates always left him with a wisp of wistfulness for her, wherever she was.

It was always a lucky soul that got to meet their 'mate—every city and town center kept a registry of names, but even in cities as large as Corus and the capital of Carthak, it was a rare event that a pair were born and raised in the same area. He checked the registries of every town he passed through, but he knew his chances of finding her were slim even so.

He wondered about her sometimes, his _Veralidaine Sarrasri._

He knew for sure that she was Gallan— _Sarrasri,_ 'daughter of Sarra', fatherless, by traditional Gallan naming conventions—and likely from one of the smaller villages; between the mountains and the climate, the majority of the population was segregated into said villages, and most of the residents of bigger cities had fallen into the more common convention of passing names from generation to generation fully intact as well.

As a child, he'd dreamed of finding her, or her finding him, and turning his trio of friends into a quartet (or maybe a sextuple, once they found their soulmates as well), giving him a friend and lover who would be uniquely _his,_ and someone he could be uniquely special to as well. Storybooks and romances telling of fated lovers who considered one another to be above all else and lasted a lifetime—he'd longed for it. Ozorne and Varice had been the only people who didn't mock him outright for it.

As he'd grown, he had started to see how unlikely those dreams of forever were, and while he'd never been able to let himself go of them completely, he'd been forced to let them fade into the background—and then, after Ozorne and the belowstairs and the flight from all he'd ever known, he'd been utterly, profoundly, _intensely_ grateful that he had never found her. She _would_ have been killed, purely to inflict as much pain on him as possible, and he would forever be grateful that she'd escaped that fate.

Even all these years later, he still wondered what she was like, though. Whether she was older or younger, taller or shorter, leaner or plumper, the shade of her eyes and the way her hair fell. If she would want to travel or would rather stick to the familiar; if she favored animals or children or neither; if she preferred reading or parties or the outdoors. If she was silly or stern, thoughtful or impulsive, passionate or mild, earnest or whimsical, gentle or sharp, affectionate or aloof...

If she was waiting for him, or had settled down, or just wanted to be free of it all.

He'd visited most of the villages in southern and eastern Galla—any he could excuse detouring for when Jon sent him north—but he still needed to convince the king to give him a year or so off to track down the rest.

The older he got, the more he understood that the chances of finding her both unattached and willing to uproot her life for him were very, very slim, and that his role in Tortall was too important for him to simply swan off to Galla, however much he may want to.

He did want to meet her though, at least just once, whether or not those dreams would forever remain dreams. His _Veralidaine Sarrasri._

 _Veralidaine._ What a beautiful name.

"Faded."

Numair did startle that time. "Pardon?"

"I have two names, and they're stacked up like plates," his companion muttered, not looking at him. She held up two pieces of leather and laid them together so that the decorative holes in the dyed leather showed the lighter, plainer leather beneath. "I was only born with the one, but when I was a child, it faded and another got writ on top of it, but it never went away, not really. So I have two names now, one black as pitch and the other like a southerner's tan, both in the same place."

"That's _fascinating,"_ slipped out of him as he leaned forward in his seat, temporarily forgetting himself and their current relationship. "May I—"

She snatched her wrist to her chest and glared at him, the clasps and rings of the tack clanking on the wooden table as she blushed even harder than before.

 _Right._ "Sorry," he said with a wince, then sighed and dropped back, rubbing his nose. "Well, I could offer you theories, but not much more than that. I confess that I've never heard of a situation quite like yours before—have you happened to find either of them?"

With an oddly profound reluctance, she said, "...Yes." She blushed even further, furiously avoiding his eye. "The... the darker one."

"And that one is alive and well?" he checked carefully, an odd twinge in his chest and stomach at the information. (There were any number of reasons why nothing could (or _should_ ) ever happen between the two of them, and yet still the thought of her being _taken_ was...)

An iota of the tension left her shoulders. "Yes, sir."

"Have you noticed any similarities or differences between the two?"

 _That_ made her clam up too. What had he _said?_

After a long moment, she finally said, "They're both men's names, sir."

He blinked. "I... see." He couldn't tell if that was the main point of contention for her or simply the safest thing she could tell him.

That seemed to be as much as she was willing to venture of her own accord, so Numair turned to thinking aloud.

"My first theory would be that your first soulmate met with an unfortunate half-accident, either partially dead or a victim of necromancy, and your second name along to... —no?" She was shaking her head.

"You said, 'the gods don't much like blank wrists,' yeah?" she said, anxious but thoughtful. "The second name... it belongs to somebody a bit... older'n that. He didn't come about with the writing."

"Well," he said ruefully, "that takes out my next few guesses too. I suppose the god in charge of your mark could have accidentally pulled double duty, or done a bit of reassigning—though I don't know if that's actually possible. With limited information..." He trailed off as she tensed up yet again, and bit down a sigh of frustration.

He wished for a lot of things, but currently, the thing he wished for the most was the knowledge of _why_ she didn't want anyone to—

...Oh.

It wasn't necessarily 'anyone', was it? Just him.

"Is it that you wouldn't want _me_ to see the names? Me specifically?" It would make sense. Even if she wasn't quite so determined to hate him for (what seemed to be) the crime of breathing, soulmate marks were... very private. He was both male and much, much bigger than her, and in a position of authority besides, and while they had a general sense of each other, it wasn't like they knew each other _well._

The look of pure guilt that crossed her face confirmed it.

It stung a little bit (he _wanted_ her favor and her trust, even if he knew he didn't have either), but if it was just him, then that made things much easier. "Would you let Onua see it? Or—oh, Alanna."

The tiny knight surveyed the table, its occupants, and its burden with a critical violet gaze, fists on hips, then smiled at Numair. "This isn't nearly where I'd expect to find you."

"Onua set me to work," he said, gesturing to the pile of straps, even though he'd entirely forgotten the masses of tack to be tackled in the midst of the soulmate mystery.

"I see," said Alanna dryly—she knew a punishment when she saw one—then moved past them both to inspect the sound, pristine tack hung along the walls.

A spark of an idea had Numair turning to Daine again. "Would you show Alanna?"

"Show _the Lioness?"_ Daine squeaked only a beat before Alanna glanced over at them and said, "Show me what?"

He held an index finger up for Alanna, _wait a moment, please,_ and kept his eyes on Daine.

She was somehow turning pinker and paler at once. "I-I couldn't possibly impose—"

"It wouldn't be an imposition," he reassured her gently, and felt Alanna shoot him an unimpressed glance for it. He ignored her; if the knight had been in a rush, she wouldn't have stopped for long enough to chat. "Alanna is an accomplished mage herself, and while she hasn't made a study of the subject, we've worked together often enough that she would know what to tell me while keeping out whatever you need kept out."

Alanna dropped the look in favor of wandering closer, intrigued despite herself. "What's all this about, then?"

He looked to Daine for permission to speak, and she hesitated for a moment before giving him a shy nod.

"Daine here has a nonstandard soulmate marker," he said, lowering his voice so it wouldn't carry far, "but she wasn't born with it like this, and I'm trying to figure out what happened. She would prefer I didn't inspect it myself, but I thought that she might not mind you or Onua instead." He set his forearms on the table, looking to Alanna as he did so. "I have been told that some things are women's business."

She inclined her head and set one hand on her hip, sliding the loops of the bridle she'd picked out up her uncuffed wrist. "So they are. I think I could manage that."

He checked on Daine next—she was conflicted but not forbidding, glancing between them with something two shades lighter than suspicion.

"Come on," he coaxed, "if the Lioness herself can't be trusted, who can?"

Alanna snorted, but Daine seemed to take his point.

"Y-Your Ladyship—"

"Alanna," 'her Ladyship' corrected, and Numair had to bite the corner of his mouth to keep from grinning at the flicker of pure _pain_ that crossed the stablehand's face.

 _Oh,_ but she was cute.

"...Lioness," said Daine, which seemed to be about as close to a compromise as she was willing to get, and looked up at the woman with big, pleading eyes. _"Would_ you?"

"I would," Alanna said, smiling.

Daine half-rose, faltered, and then stepped away from the table at Alanna's gesture.

"You can't say what the names are," she said warningly as she walked over to the knight, facing away from Numair. She held her wrist to her chest, her back straight with nerves. "You _can't._ Promise?"

"I swear on my shield and my honor," Alanna promised, slightly bemused, and Daine reluctantly surrendered her wrist.

"She was born with a normal name," Numair said, repressing his _intense_ curiosity as he listened to the scrape of the laces on Daine's cuff opening. "When she was a child, the second name faded in while the second faded out, as would happen if the first died, but her second soulmate is older than the name and... Alanna?"

Alanna was staring at Daine's wrist like said wrist had just fed her a mouse. Daine's ears and neck were turning red.

"You did promise, mum," the girl muttered, sounding rather like she regretted many things, and slowly, Alanna's expression morphed from consternated shock to growing amusement.

"So I did," she said, her voice thick and squeaking at once, then coughed a laugh, studying the mark and turning it in her grip. She gave it a zap with her magic, presumably to check its legitimacy, and Daine yelped. "When did you say it started to shift?"

"When I was a child—about ten or eleven years ago? It started in the spring of my seventh year and had settled before winter."

(She was younger than he'd assumed. 'Ten or eleven years ago' would be right about the time he'd started working for Jon. It was odd to think of Daine as a child struggling with a strange soulmate marker right about then—it was at once too recent and a lifetime ago.)

"Well," said Alanna, satisfied with the answer, "I know what happened now. Onua mentioned you were asking after him—I'm afraid we both thought the worst." She started lacing the cuff back up without a further word on the state of the mark, while Numair blinked over the implications.

Both Alanna _and_ Onua knew one of Daine's soulmates?

The girl lurched forward, grasping the Lioness' forearms in entreaty, her blue-grey eyes wide and full of heartbreaking hope. "Please, mum, Lioness, Your Ladyship—do you know of him? My first soulmate? My Ma swears she's found his family but we can't find nobody who's heard hide or hair of him—"

"I do," said Alanna, an undercurrent of laughter in the words and the enjoyment of a private joke shining out of her amethyst gaze. "I'd have to weasel around that promise I made, though."

Daine blushed but didn't waver, instead saying, "Just the one, then?"

Alanna tilted her head as if to say, _fair enough,_ and tied the laces together in a bow, then walked back over to the wall of tack to seek out the rest of the supplies she'd need. "Well, you wouldn't find him with his family, it's true—he's a mage, you see, and he studied magic instead of following in his parents' footsteps."

"A mage," Daine echoed, hanging on Alanna's every word, while Numair tried to remember the mages Alanna likely knew. The list was long, but he could assume they were working or middle class, not nobles, which narrowed it down somewhat—assuming, of course, that it was a mage he knew as well. That Onua knew him made it likely, though not certain, that the man was a court mage.

"And quite a good one, too," she went on, warmth under her laughing tone, and Numair mentally crossed off about half of them. Jon's court was filled with competent mages, but Alanna's favor was a much rarer thing. "There's no one I'd rather have at my back."

The irritation (jealousy) Numair felt then was twofold—both in the awed expression on Daine's face, and the information that there was some mage out there that Alanna favored _that much._ He hadn't been aware that there was another mage quite so close to her, other than Jon, but Jon was her soulmate, and that was to be expected.

"I'm not the only one who thinks so, either," she continued blithely. "He's got accolades to spare, some of the highest around."

Daine bit her lip, fiddling with the laces of her cuff and looking slightly intimidated, and Numair narrowed down his list to about five mages who'd done their masters certificates, then further shortened it as he remembered that a couple of them had already found their soulmates. Maybe there was an unusually accomplished adept...?

"Unfortunately, his former friends didn't have much by way of honor, I'm afraid, and rather powerful to boot. They gave him a spot of trouble in Carthak and he had to flee for his life."

Daine inhaled sharply, stricken, while Numair frowned, finding himself with a solid list of 'none'. There were a few mages in court he knew of who had studied in Carthak, but none with sordid pasts that he knew of... though his own sordid past _was_ kept under wraps. It was possible that he wasn't privy to all of the state secrets...

"He was working as a wandering Player when I found him—"

...Wait.

"—and brought him back to Corus—after an adventure or two, of course. I'm not sure if I find them or if they find me."

_Wait._

Daine was still watching Alanna leisurely pick out the set of reins she wanted to use with baited breath and an irresistibly imploring look, the perfect image of a heart on her sleeve, while cool awareness started to trickle into Numair's stomach.

"Jon liked him immediately—"

"The king!" Daine exclaimed, shocked and delighted.

"Oh, yes," said Alanna, obviously enjoying herself a great deal, "took him right under his wing, he did. And a good thing, too, because—" She faltered, then moved on with, "Well, remind me to tell you the whole tale later. It's a good one."

The girl nodded eagerly, forgetting her shyness, while Numair felt like he was watching a blown glass vase plummet to the ground in slow motion.

"Jon gave him a job here in Corus afterwards," Alanna said, finally selecting her reins, "working as a war mage when it's needful and a scholar when it's not."

"Oh, but, what _happened_ to him?" Daine asked—almost _begged,_ following in Alanna's footsteps as the knight took her tack over to her customary saddle.

"'Happened'?" Alanna echoed as they came to a stop. "Oh, nothing. He's still here—he's been Jon's favorite for ages."

Numair watched as Daine's expression started to freeze.

"Just, you see," Alanna said, "when he started working, there were still plenty of Carthaki soldiers looking for him, so he had to change his name before he could live here safely. About ten or eleven years ago, in fact."

Daine's face had drained of all color. Her expression was indescribable. "That c-... can't... You can't _possibly_ —"

"Your ma found his family, didn't she?" Alanna continued mercilessly. Her deadpan was obviously taking a great deal of effort to maintain. "Tailors in Tyra? You can ask 'em yourself. Yusaf and Kabidi are his parents. He still has contact with them, he's just not sewing for a living."

Daine shut her mouth.

Her work here done, Alanna smiled benignly at the stablehand. "Your full name isn't 'Daine', is it, youngster."

"No, mum," was the weak reply.

Alanna clapped her on the shoulder, then bent down to hoist the saddle with a grunt. "Might want to tell that fellow over there what it really is," she said, strained through the effort. "He's been waiting to hear it for a mighty long time now."

And with that, she left the tack room, a flicker of violet fire flickering across the door in her wake—a two-way muffling spell.

With it, the silence was even more pronounced than it would have been otherwise.

After an uncomfortable number of seconds in which Numair struggled with what he could say to break the silence, his companion whipped around to stare at him with fire in her eyes and a flush high on her cheeks.

"Arram Draper?" she demanded, her fists balled as she stormed up to him, absolutely stunning in her passion—and rather terrifying in it, too.

"Yes?" he said, shrinking back despite himself.

 _"You're_ Arram Draper?!" It was a good thing Alanna had left them with muffling spells; she would have been heard from courtyard to great hall, otherwise.

"Y-Yes?" He wondered if he should apologize for it.

The girl scowled at him furiously, then started fighting off her cuff. "Odd's _bobs,_ first that, now this—" She shucked it entirely instead of shoving it up her arm as most did, and then brandished her slight wrist under his nose. _"See?"_

 _Numair Salmalín_ was inked with flair over the fine blue veins, straight as an arrow, and beneath them, partially obscured and toned in a moderate tan, was the shape of the name _Arram Draper._

He swallowed.

He hadn't put much thought into what it would feel like to see his name written across another's wrist, but it felt like the breath had been knocked out of him, his heart skipping for the pure _joy_ of it, the heady, _heavy_ grind of his world tilting on its axis. The flight and plunge of something irrevocable, caught in a dream and yet indisputably real, proof that she was—

Numbly, he reached over and loosened the laces on his own cuff, sliding it up to reveal _Veralidaine Sarrasri_ and offering it to her in turn, as the ritual went.

Daine— _Verali **daine** ,_ how in all the realms had he _missed that_ —stared at it with cheeks that flushed redder and redder and redder.

"Oh, that's all very well then," she said sourly, then grabbed him by the lapels and crushed her mouth to his.

It took exactly one beat for him to realize what was happening, and then he was surging into it with no higher thought, reaching up to cradle her cheek as the kiss went from hard and sloppy to heated enough to melt his bones, all sparks and molten gold and candy sweetness and _Daine..._

(It was possible that he had wanted this—wanted Daine—much more than he'd been willing to let himself acknowledge.)

She pulled away, steadying herself with the grip she still had on his shirt, breathing heavily and swallowing hard. Her cheeks and lips were flushed an enchanting shade of scarlet, her eyes soft and bright, that frenetic energy calmed into a faint trembling.

He found his voice first.

 _"Now_ will you tell me what I've done to upset you so?"

An emotion that seemed to be halfway between embarrassment and absolute mortification made that lovely mouth tighten up. "You're infuriating," she informed him stiffly.

"I... see." He did not see. "My apologies...?"

She glared at him, but it was flimsier than it ever had been before, and melted away with a mere stroke to her cheek. It took little more than tugging her back in and rubbing his nose against hers to convince her to kiss him again, slow and lingering.

"Veralidaine," he said once they parted again, like he'd said so many times before, and felt her breathing hitch and falter. He laughed. "I'm an _idiot_ for not seeing that, aren't I."

"I did... I did make sure not to tell no one," she mumbled, shamefaced.

Right. Because she'd known and... had decided not to tell him? He felt like he should be displeased by that, but it was very difficult to be displeased by anything at the moment. "Why didn't you say anything?"

She tried for a scowl and got lost on her way to a frown, but managed some amount of vitriol for her grumble of, "'Cause you wasn't— weren't— I wanted _my Arram,_ not this showy _Numair_ fellow with his curly-cues and fancy magic business and _king's court_ nonsense. And then you were— _you,_ and you're very hard to not think much of and I didn't think much of you for that because I just wanted _my Arram."_ The petulant note she ended up on was matched by an endearing moue, which then melted into a rueful look as she dropped her head. "But after all that, you are my Arram. I think I'm the idiot here."

That was the point at which he _had_ to kiss her again, tasting her grimace before she exhaled sharply and opened to him with a sweetness and softness that left him with gooseflesh from head to toe.

Of all the things he'd guessed might come between him and his soulmate, his soulmate's pure, stubborn, dogged loyalty to his own past self was not one of them.

He'd _known_ he would love her, because that was what a soulmate was, but the surge of affection he felt on the tail of that bit of information was much stronger than he ever suspected it could be.

"Veralidaine," he said, for the pure joy of _saying_ it, and she whined, embarrassed, against his lips. "Veralidaine, Veralidaine, Veralidaine Sarrasri..."

She drew back and gave him a pathetic look, so he (somewhat regretfully) corrected it to, "Daine. It is a beautiful name, though."

"It's a mouthful, is what it is," she grumbled, then straightened and wobbled. "And I'm not sure I buy your call on beauty. What sort of name is _Numair_ anyway? What _Player's caravan_ did _you_ join?"

"Corus," he said, and she pantomimed shock for his cheek.

He wondered if she knew she was grinning.

Glancing at the table reminded him of the still-impressive stack of equine accessories to be mended, and he made a face.

"Onua will be none too pleased with us if we don't clear this lot out," said Daine dryly— _his_ Daine, his _Veralidaine_ —and he had to agree.

"So she will." Stretching out his senses a bit, he tugged at Alanna's sound barrier and felt it fold. "Back to work then, I suppose. And use 'Numair', if you please. I did start using it for a reason."

She met his eye with a sparkle of mischief and a daring little smile. "Numair."

His heart and thought processes both sputtered to a halt for a moment over the way her voice _caressed_ it, then tripped back to life. He swallowed, then cleared his throat. He knew he was blushing. "...That, yes."

Her grin then was much closer to a smirk, but she retook her seat without further comment.

If she'd been good company when she was determined to hate him, then that was nothing on her company when she was open to conversing (teasing, flirting, listening and asking and answering), and it was a good thing he hadn't made plans to take his heart with him when he left, because he didn't think she would have left him much of a choice anyway.


End file.
